Tory Wokingham Borough Councillors continue break code of conduct.

Wokingham Borough Council has decided to restrict filming at meetings in which the voting public are most concerned and corruption most likely. Planing and Scrutiny.

http://www.getreading.co.uk/news/local-news/wokingham-borough-council-agrees-relax-5320333

Did you ever think the nice people who came to your door asking for your vote in exchange for open accountability and transparency would shut you out like this?

Our Councillors have a code of conduct. Here

9.2.4.5 Openness: Holders of public office should be as open as possible about all the

decisions and actions that they take. They should give reasons for their decisions and

restrict information only when the wider public interest clearly demands;

I have been told by the slippery council that I can not complain about a councilor in this instance. So our next approach will have to be to ask each Councillor to stand by their code, stand against the routes to corruption and insist that filming of planning and scrutiny meetings be allowed or conducted by the council.

Please just do it now. 2 minutes. The council operate on volume of people. Like with Elms field, unless you say something you agree. I've yet to meet a non Cllr who is happy with the overall plans, but theoretically 99% of us are. The silent majority of Wokingham need start voicing their discontent.

http://www.wokingham.gov.uk/council/councillors/search/

To make your life easy.

Dear Cllr

I was dismayed to hear that the council had ever seen fit to block filming public meetings. A video recorded account has fewer levels of interpretation, is not as open to doctoring is quick and accessible. We had thought this all behind us but now find that the council has decided to list which public meeting can be filmed and has excluded two specifically. Planning and Scrutiny.

Were there ever two meetings more likely for vested interests to profit from secrecy and therefore in need of of transparency it was those.

Please can you voice my concerns and also confirm if you will call for and vote in favor of allowing filming of 'All meetings open to the public' or the council must undertake the filming themselves and provide access in full to the electorate.

Kind regards

Your Name




And do pass this on to your mates.

There are not many other people fighting your corner EVERYONE seems to think someone else will do it. Those few of us that are trying are loosing. You have to help of live in an urban sprawl. There is simply too much money to be made building on farms and village greens. Make them say no to you. At the moment their tactic is to leave you on the side line and then pretend you were given the chance to 'have your say'. Then ask the air in so many ways in so many places they can make up whatever statistics they want.

If you have been to Wokingham Voice before you can stop reading.

For those of you new to council meetings and no doubt shocked, this has been going on for almost a year now. Finally after a lot of pressure and a threat of legal action and citizen arrest we filmed some public forums. These last nearly two hours each so it is best absorbed as of background audio and look up when relevant.

Below is an example of a public meeting that was filmed. Later a Councillor denied information evident in this video and threatened legal action when accused of being mistaken or lying. This is why a public record that can not be doctored is essential.

The example below is of a meeting where apparently the "minutes/slides have been drafted and are in the process of being signed off by the correct officers".
The video went live 1 month ago today. Perhaps they should have just filmed it.

Wokingham Town Center Redevelopment's House of Cards.

The survey questions.

Q1 - Do you think the scheme responds effectively to Wokingham's character as a market town with small retail units and well-managed public realm

Q2 - Peach Place - What elements of the scheme do you support?


Q3 - Peach Place - What elements of the scheme do you think could be improved?

Q4 - Elms Field - What elements of the scheme do you support?

Q5 Elms Field - What elements of the scheme do you think could be improved?

Q6 - What level of diversity would you like to see in the streetscene? A = breaking up buildings into different parts. B = Number of slightly different blocks using a variety of materials. C = Splitting the street into a number of blocks, same design

Q7 - The proposals for the park include a number of spaces; open grass, events space, play area, fountains, orchard/meadow area.  Do you agree with these? Q8 - Do you think we've missed any spaces?

Q9 - What do you think should be included in the play area?

Q10 - What type of seating would like to see in the park and where?

Q11 - Do you have any other suggestions for how public art could be included in the park?

Q12 - Our analysis of Wokingham identified key features that make-up the town's heritage feel - do you think we have missed any key characteristics?

What is lacking from this set of questions?

How about list of things you do not like? You are never invited to disprove. Only suggest improvements.

Another supermarket. Yes or no?

60% reduction of Elms fields?

160 dwellings?

£60m public debt?

Contracts without truly independent scrutiny?

Quotes from the Public Forum two weeks ago. Alistair Corries comments regarding the purpose of the presentation end of July 2012. 

““We put together the Elms Field event in 2012 because I wanted to understand the support and what people think.

“We understand 1,200 people attended that – 3.9 per cent of the Wokingham population.

“We felt there was reasonable support for what we are doing. If there really was a lack of support out there we would hear about it.

If that were true Cllr. Why did you sign the £100m contract before that first open public consultation started? Perhaps so that the next Wokingham Times headline could be 'It's too late.'

I managed to get there on the last day as they were closing up but apparently plenty of people vented their spleens on the scale of development.

If you look through the survey data it seems to be generally against this scale of project. The bits that are pro are lumped together using similar short phrases. Then snapdragon survey focuses on how many people like one element. So if you like a high quality play area, you are all in. Me included. I was amazed that it was only 83% in favour.

This is not stupidity. This is calculated.

Spin is just another word for deceit.

What possible motive could a public representative have for signing the contract before we had any idea how big they had managed to grow the project? Surely not a fundamental belief in democracy. Is that important to you?

Like like this page to say up to date on facebook.

Many of us voted for them because somehow they can afford to invest the time to be friendly on our doorstep.

Please lets not do this again.

And don't let them get away with this either.

Like it, be counted, get involved.

https://www.facebook.com/KeepElmsFieldGreen

Wokingham Borough Council continues to reserve the right to block evidence of councils public promises.

Update 2012-06-25. I filmed the Wokingham Town Center Regeneration forum today. At the Start the Chair, Alistair Corrie, explained the new rules on filming. I was pleased to note that attendees are now expected to accept that filming may be taking place the chair also unless they have a good reason.

Find them at www.youtube.com/wokinghamvoice


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There is a great institution in this county. Freedom of the press. The right to film in public, to hold those who control the law to account.

The is a problem in this country. Freedom of the press. The ability to hound and publish information that is not in the public interest but instead intended to hurt or shock on a purely personal level.

It is because of that very problem that I offered a contract with my initial request.

1. The recording shared in full. If I wish to draw someones attention to a moment it would be using time reference points. Not an edit, in which the context of which can not be found.

2. The camera would be on the presentation and those who have taken a role where they are accountable to the tax paying public of Wokingham. Even though the public have no right not be filmed in a public place, it is a simple courtesy.

That is it. Public consultations are kept honest and the shy public are protected from stardom.

The council has now come up with their own terms and conditions that are the same as the current ones they use.

"The request must include the following information:

• The name, organisation and contact details of the applicant making the request
• What the audio / visual recording will be used for
• Which meeting this requests refers to
• How this information will be used

When the information has been received by the communications team, it will consult with the Chairman of the meeting on the detail of the specific request. The Chairman will then decide whether to grant permission, subject to agreement from all those in attendance.

During the meeting

If filming has been permitted, the Chairman will make an announcement at the start of the meeting. .

If the Chairman feels the audio / visual recording is disrupting the meeting in any way or any pre-meeting agreement has been breached the operator of the equipment will be required to stop.

If someone refuses to stop when requested to do so, the Chairman will ask the person to leave the meeting. If the person refuses to leave then the Chairman may adjourn the meeting or make other appropriate arrangements for the meeting to continue without disruption."

This is in no way keeping with the freedom of the press or with the intention of Eric pickles and it is certainly not in keeping a necessary part of accountable governance.

This is also something you will only every get from the Tories in Wokingham who have made it clear you should be seen and not heard and that they have something to hide.

Full council public meeting rules.

e-mail describing executives current state of reluctance to be accountable for what they say.

"The guidelines make it clear that the Secretary of State believes local authorities should, within certain limitations, allow filming of their decision-making meeting, such as Full Council and Executive meetings. Wokingham Borough Council intends to implement this recommendation at the earliest possible opportunity."

Why. What can change.

What is going on surrounding the £1.3 Billion of planning profit that Cllr Keith Baker is negotiating, and the secret finances and ownership details surrounding the £100m contract to change our our commuter market town into a"Business hubb with 18 hour economy" that make our representative prefer that the current batch of meetings are not shared in full unedited?

I have recently been threatened with a law suite by an executive member of our council for accusing them of being mistaken or a liar. He insisted he could not be mistaken, since he makes up the rules. The leader of the opposition vouched for him. 

Update. No letter from the solicitors. Perhaps because I decided to publish the evidence, which is conclusive.

It is very important that our council is not mistaken or lying with what they are negotiating at the moment. If you ever watched CSI or Elementary? I do not need to tell you how this stacks up. I can only hope it is dumb pride and not the next generations mortgages lining already deep pockets.

They could commission the filming themselves. 'No resources.'

I offered to purchase the equipment for them. 'No, but thanks for the offer'

Put an end to the freedom to lie to the public. GoodEgg.org.uk 28th of August.

Children Vitamin Overdose

We had a scare today when DD cam up to say the her brother aged 3 had eaten 5 vitamins. I guess she got them out and left them low. He has been warned off them before and seemingly until now understood well that they were a special one per day thing.

It was a new pack of chewy bassets from the day before so it was easy to calculate that he had in-fact consumed 17!

So my thoughts are try to induce vomiting, I know you are never advised to as inhaling vomit is dangerous too, at the same time he has been sick thanks to a snotty nose many times so I believe that is a case of mitigating blame, not most reliable practise.

Meanwhile the wife is on the internet. We know that A and D and Iron are the ones to be concerned about. There was no Iron in the tablets.

Needless to say NHS direct wasted about 15 minutes. So if he were being slowly poisoned from the contents of his stomach it was a bad move. The reason I have written this is so that others can benefit from the information I gathered on Google.

If you want to read of the NHS direct experience then go to the bottom.

Needless to say that, if your tablets do not contain iron and are just ABCDE at the RDA a study in china regarding Vitamin A suggests that 20x the RDA had no symptoms,there were a few months of physiological balance abnormalities. Vitamin A and D leave the body as used so just stay off the tablets for few months to get back to normal at that unnoticeable physiological level. The others are water soluble and you use them and wee what you do not.

The box is now higher and off limits to absent minded DD.

Science bit.

From
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/118/2/820

Numerous vitamin supplements are available over-the-counter to the general public. Some such supplements are available as candy-like chewable preparations to encourage consumption by children. We report 3 cases of overdose of such preparations. Each patient had taken an estimated 200000 to 300000 IU of vitamin A. Their circulating vitamin A (retinol and retinyl palmitate) concentrations were monitored over a 6-month period. There were no clinical or biochemical complications noted. However, there were marked increases in both retinol and retinyl palmitate concentrations above age-related reference ranges. In particular, it took 1 to 3 weeks for the serum retinol concentrations to peak and many months for them to normalize. Parents should be warned about the dangers of excessive vitamin consumption. Clinicians should be aware of the late peak in serum retinol concentrations, which may lead to late complications of vitamin A overdose.

Our tablets were in 'ug' not 'iu'

For vitamin A it would appear that 1ug is about 7.5iu 

http://www.sweetware.com/Vitamin%20A%20Technical%20Details.htm

NHS Direct.

While I was trying to induce vomiting the wife found nothing of value on web and called NHS direct. Where a lady went though a list of pointless questions for a minute and said wait for a call back.Vomiting was not going to happen but the mixed blessing is that trying to make him vomit was very distressing for him.We do not want this happening again.

NHS direct called back.This time I took it.I now know how much of each vitamin he has consumed, he is showing no symptoms and just need to run that info past someone who knows what upper limits they choose to pump the stomach at, if any.

The new lady explains that the last lady did not have our detail correct and then goes through them again, asks lots and lots of irrelevant questions for a minute before I interrupt and explain that he has a stomach full of overdosed medicine and we just need to find out what the upper limits are before we act. She then decided to take the time to start a lecture and insist of asking the pointless questions, while neglecting to ask the contents of the vitamins (she has askedwhich ones they ware)

Southern Wokingham SDL Public meeting Wednesday 22nd May

Update 3: I was going to ask the other councilors present by e-mail to provide their recollection to see how many would lie in his defence. I unfortunately found it hard to locate a list of said people and actually stuggle to cram real work and family life into the day, I do this for our Grandkids, not pride. Anyway I tweeted Cllr Prue Bray as she apologized but believed that the even was if one person disagreed. Putting one more point on the mounting evidence that Wokingham has one group of people who profit from planning permissions running it.

Anyway. The evidence at 03:30 on youtube. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUx50fkm6rU


Either a liar, or unbelievably forgetful. Either way this man controls negotiations over £1.3 billion profit in a secretive, closed manner. Hey Wokingham. You gave these people your vote without requiring any commitment on transparency and independent scrutiny. Well done.

Update 2: Cllr Baker is trying to bully me now. He has bluffed that he will sue me for slander as I insist that at the Northern SDL consultation the terms of recording were majority and the Southern SDL only one person needed to object. He insists that it was one person for both. I told him that he is either mistaken or a liar. His answer

"As the person who set the rules I know what I set. This was communicated to you but you dispute this."

If you would like to find out if the other councilors present are also liars please do get in contact with them and ask them if the Northern SDL 'PUBLIC CONSULTATION' was cast as a majority in favor of allowing filming for full unedited free comment distribution. Or at least ask them what they do remember.

This had been going on for a long time. There is something amiss in the council regarding transparency and it seems to be more than a few.


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Update1: Cllr Keith Baker blocked the filming again. He had a form asking people if they object to filming, like the last one, only he changed the rules. One person. Not a majority.

I have sent him this link on the new law requiring the allowing of filming but he says nothing has changed.

There is a public meeting on Tuesday 25th. Lets see what happens?

If some press could come down and, should Cllr Baker of or one of his henchmen try to interfere, ask why the council fails to accept the importance of reference material in case there are any lies, plus a transparent debate, let alone a digestible version for the majority who can not attend.

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Original post.

Tory developer liaison councillors want to include you in a consultation after which you will have agreed to allow some developers and a family trust, who by chance purchased just the right farms, to build 5000 houses along a relief road that will run from near Loch Fyne and come out onto the Tesco round about.

I know what you are thinking. At times the cue of traffic past Loch Fyne runs all the way to the Molly Millars lane mini roundabout. Surely this will make things worse.

Luckily the developers and their councillors have run an industry standard computer model and the roads can cope by having better junctions.

To ensure that you can attend and 'Have your say' the Tories have put up invisible posters and sent invisible letters to local residents with ample time to make arrangements to attend, the e-mail went into your spam filter.

You will need to make arrangements to attend because it starts at 6pm. So if you have a job you will need to leave early and if you have a family you will need someone is there for 5:30 to look after the kids.

Wednesday 22nd May 6 - 7:45pm. Rose Strret Methodist Church Room round the back (enter from round the back)

Update. E-mail and tweets went out from council today, morning after this blog. Coincidence? Now lets see if we get a poster at the entrance to Tesco so most people might actually find out what is happening.

Wokingham. Is your plumbing going wrong?

Update. On further inspection it would appear that the sand like sediment is actually the resin from my water softener, (looks like sand but is a bit squichy)

I would like to thank South East Water for their prompt and attentive service and apologize for any inconvenience.

Did Cllr Keith Baker tell an outright lie in www.getwokingham, did I or was there a mistake?

Further updates below are highlighted and dated

2013/02/12

In a recent article I requested that public meetings are allowed to be filmed and shared with the public in an open and accessible manner have been very vocal in condemning any person who stands against it. Those are few. In fact no one says openly that is should not happen.

In the online getwokingham article the 18th comment is from Cllr Keith Baker

http://www.getwokingham.co.uk/news/s/2128809_blogger_banned_from_filming_public_forum

 "Full marks to Kaz for only telling part of the story. He has been told that we have every intention of filming all the SDL Forums and have even suggested he could "pitch" for the business. Unfortunately we simply did not have the time to organise it and we did had some indication of people not being comfortable with this. 

Two weeks is simply not time enough to get the Churchs permission and to alert all attendees that we would be filming. Whatever we do we cannot put barriers in place which stops resident participation. So this has to be handled carefully.

Cllr Keith Baker
12/02/2013 at 19:32 Offensive or Inappropriate? 

Other than twitter rants which are public this is my last communication with the council on the matter. 1st Feb.

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Hello Kaz,

Yes – sorry to have missed you. I had spotted you and thought I’d catch you at the end but you were chatting to a developer and I was putting away chairs – and then you were gone I think.

Anyway, issue of videoing or using other forms of social media to increase accessibility is on table for discussion here so I am not sure what else we would ask you to do at this stage - although you can obviously continue to encourage debate via twitter etc as you wish.

Yours,

Dave

David Allen Partnership Development Officer Wokingham Borough Council Shute End Wokingham

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So either there is a mistake somewhere or one of us is lying or he has been lied too. If the Right Honourable Cllr Baker could ascertain where the confusion has come from from then we can move to highlight the cause and avoid repeat occurrences.

2013/04/22

I arrive at the North Wokingham SDL with my kit, speaking to attendees about the issue of lack of publication and refusal of transparency regarding the developments and was pleased to find that all seemed to be in favour.

When the council arrived it turned out that they had included a questionnaire with a tick box to allow filming. The idea being so long as the majority was in favour. 100% was and I filmed.

I had agreed in advance that I would share the film unedited on my www.youtube.com/wokinghamvoice and provide the the council and Wokingham times. At the end Cllr Baker came to me and asked that it should go on the council site only but they would allow open comments and not restrict it at al without notifying me.

I have sent them a link to download the video and apparently they can not do so.

The main thing is that there is a record from which account can be held and I have a lot on my plate anyway so I'll worry about that when I have all the detail from the meeting to share also.

2013/05/22

On arrival at the Southern SDL meeting I was advised that I should not yet put up my equipment because I may not be allowed to film. Poor Dave is clearly not comfortable with conflict and he already knew it was coming. A very different vibe than the one in May.

I was then made aware that if 1 person said no it would be unfair on that one person who will not be on film. There was one. Possibly a plant from the Developers or there friend Cllr Baker. Unlikely to be a concerned local wishing for the public to be involved, made aware and for there to be reference material should the answers to the hard questions go on unresolved.

There was a little ruckus but unsurprisingly from the 4 or 5 regular members of the public who actually bothered to attend. Unsurprisingly Cllr Baker tried to present it as anything but un-democratic and again lied, this time insisting that the Northern SDL meeting recording was on the same terms.

The meeting was interesting. One developer explained that they needed to pay less infrastructure contribution because their landowners cut, who they have a contract with to buy the land from at a set price when planning is approved, and the new extra cut that network rail want  leaves them too little profit.

Good. Why, if we are allocating greenbelt for development are we allowing developers to set up contract and negotiate terms? It is a big fat mess with a a few professional negotiators batting around big numbers. This worries me.

Compulsory purchase the allocated green belt. Competitive tender developers to plan developments. Break the lots into parts and competitive tender construction. 

Less already wealthy opportunists get to multiply their wealth doing nothing of actual value so that our children can pay an extra £100k for their home. The profit can go to sustainable jobs and subsidised housing.